Moral murder.........?

"You don't agree with my idea of historical judgment, do you?  Time and time again, you have come back with this answer that a statesman must do things that are immoral if his country is to survive.  It was necessary for Elizabeth to order the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.  But, I tell you, my old teacher, that that was murder and for a statesman to order murder and carry out covert operations and to lie to his country, these all ought to have the same punishment as if an ordinary person had done it.  But I tell you what, first comes the assassin with his dagger, then comes the historian with his sponge to  wipe it all out.  So we write biographies of figures, like Alexander the Great, who were nothing  but murderers on a huge scale and yet we try to justify it, that they brought better things to the world."
-Lord Acton, as channeled by Rufus Fears